Shia LaBeouf Is Spending a Month Alone in a Remote Finnish Cabin—Unless Trump Trolls Find Him First

Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö, and Luke Turner at CalArts on February 4, 2016. Courtesy of Vivi Fragou and the artists.

Shia LaBeouf just wants to be alone—sort of. The unlikely location for actor-turned-artist’s latest project is isolated Lapland, the northern-most region of Finland. There, he and his collaborators, Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, will each spend the next month off the grid and locked away in separate cabins for a project called #ALONETOGETHER.

The piece, which began April 12, is being held in collaboration with Kiasma, the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki. The only communication the artists will have with the outside world for the duration of the exhibition will be through text messages sent by visitors at the museum.

Replicas of the cabin residences are on site at the Kiasma, and the artists are able to watch a livestream of visitors there. The project website is supposed to display this video and a continuous stream of real-time communications between museum-goers and the artists. As of press time, however, the project website says that it is “waiting for the event to go live…”

The cabin for #ALONETOGETHER by Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö, and Luke Turner at Kiasma, the Finnish National Gallery. Courtesy of Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö, and Luke Turner.

One possible reason for the interruption? Trump supporters wearing red “Make America Great” hats have already visited the new project, disrupting the installation, according the Guardian. According to RT, LaBeouf has been outspoken in his disregard for those trolling the exhibition, writing that they’ve adopted their far-right views because they can’t “get any women,”

Users on Ylilauta, the Finnish version of 4chan, have also dedicated themselves to tracking down the artists’ secret location. A tweet from one user suggests that by analyzing wood patterns in photographs of Lapland’s approximately 3,000 rental cabins, their whereabouts may have already been found. (The idea of LaBeouf being hunted in a cabin is all the more amusing when one considers Rob Cantor’s cult-favorite music video “Shia LaBeouf,” which casts the actor as a murderous cannibal chasing you through the woods.)

The new project “weaves a virtual link between Kiasma’s visitors and the artists,” according to a statement on the artists’ website, highlighting technology’s ability to forge connections between people despite distance and physical isolation. It is a response, the artists told Dazed, to “digital revolution and its impact on our culture, economy, human identity, and behavior,” and a reminder that sometimes it can be good to unplug from being “constantly connected.”